


the new way of living with the world

by buckstiel



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Battle of Scarif, Friendship/Love, Galactic Civil War, Gen, Jedha, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Movie(s), Sexual Content, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9114985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: When the Empire has taken everything, you hold on to what you can.





	

**Author's Note:**

> scene, post-rogue-one: me, trying not to short-circuit my laptop with my tears, vaguely singing "seasons of love" to myself
> 
> hence, this. i don't know. there were supposed to be six or seven of these vignettes instead of four but those simply weren't working so here we are!!
> 
> quidnunc-life continues to be Super Duper, for many reasons aside from her betaing
> 
> (title from "we are surprised" by ada limon)

**_one._ **

The thickness of Yavin’s summer had started to set in and Cassian’s patience was bowing under the weight.

“Give it to someone else. Please,” he added--curt, but with enough respect beneath the surface to soften the tense set Mon’s jaw had taken. “I work better alone.”

“And therein lies the problem, Captain.”

The old Massassi temples weren’t built to be hangars. Smoke from fritzing X-wing engines stuck to the moss, wove into the roots, and the whirring of drills and astromechs was dotted with the mechanics’ ever-present hacking. If he stayed too long, he would join them. Lose any hope of stealth on the next planet the intelligence took him.

(That was why he was walking away from Mon, he told himself. Fresh air. A bit of sun. So it of course _did not_ bother him that she was following so close behind that her toes clipped his boot heels.)

He stopped at the edge of the tarmac, tried not to pull away when Mon put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve done solo work for too long. Take the droid.”

“Fine, I’ll take _a_ droid,” he said. “Not that one.” A protocol droid could have been useful, carefully programmed with the etiquette and nuance of any being he would need to pry information from--he ran through the events at that backwater Corellian village again, this time with Bail Organa’s brass droid at his side able to talk down their hysterical Twi’lek contact.

“Yes, that one.”

“You’re giving me an _Imperial_ \--”

“Cartalle and Wedge oversaw his initial reprogramming themselves--”

“Respectfully, Senator,” he said. “I don’t care that Antilles and Pava were involved. I can’t…” 

Somewhere in the surrounding jungle, a flock of birds crowed and fluttered through the underbrush until they broke through the thinning canopy, wide golden wings the only thing close to clouds in the sky. The sight always turned his stomach on end, something too close to a hazy memory of home.

“You can’t what?”

He sighed, finally shrugging off her hand. “This is starting to feel like an order.”

The corners of her eyes twitched. “Maybe it should be.”

* 

It was too tall, for one. The seats in Cassian’s ship had to be readjusted to account for the droid’s clanking, ridiculous legs and the effort kept him grounded for the better part of three days. Boredom slid into anger far too quickly for his comfort. And it was an aimless anger: the Empire wouldn’t take it, nor would Mon, so it was left to stew under his skin as the glass of blue milk he didn’t actually want grew warm in his hand.

“Captain Andor, I was told to let you know our ship is ready.” The droid was bent over in the doorway. A few more steps and it would have been able to stand upright, but there it stayed. “I am K-2SO, and rumor has it that you don’t like me at all.”

At least it had a good ear.

“An encrypted message said one of your contacts was on Draxam IV with intelligence about the situation on Jedha,” it said. “So if you’re done sulking, we should probably go.”

Cassian laughed before he could stop himself. Him, _sulking_.

“Senator Mothma also said that I should suggest we stop somewhere for you to get something to wear that’s less disgusting.”

One of K-2SO’s eyes flickered and buzzed before setting itself right again, the lifeless and sunken useless bulbs sending his stomach churning against the caf he’d thrown back earlier that morning in lieu of a real breakfast.

“She said that, did she?”

“Draxam IV appears to have a dress code, Captain Andor.”

“But she said my clothes were disgusting?”

The droid glanced around the empty room, fingers flexing--almost anxiously, if that was an emotion Antilles and Pava had programmed into it. For whatever reason. “Yes. She did say that. I don’t see the problem with them. They’re practical.” It paused. “May I come in, please? I think this stance is hurting some of my gears.”

“Fine.”

K-2SO took a few small steps forward and straightened its back. “I know you don’t like me because you believe you work better alone--that is another thing Senator Mothma said. I happen to disagree.”

It cocked its head to the side like it was studying him. Odd. These droids--they’d always been clunky and awkward, made humanoid because the design dealt with prisoners better, not because their programming resembled anything conscious.

“And why is that?” he said after a moment.

“You don’t work better alone. You’d rather just _be_ alone. And I think that’s stupid.”

There wasn’t anything he could have said to that. The practiced lie was where it always was, tucked into the inside of his cheek, deployable at a second’s notice--useless now, he thought. No use fronting to a droid whose very circuitry wires it away from even the hint of betrayal.

He cleared his throat, clogged thick from the few sips of blue milk he’d had. “Draxam IV, you say?” He stood, approached the droid. Craned his neck up the extra few feet it had on him. “Orders are orders. Better get a move on.”

As he stepped around it and into the hall, it kept talking to itself. Some approximation of muttering under its breath about how it was right after all even if Cassian wouldn’t admit it. But it wasn’t right--it _wasn’t_.

It wasn’t.

* 

“What does it say about you, Captain Andor, that I know how to tie this ridiculous thing and you do not?”

“That formalwear isn’t a regular part of--too tight, K-2SO, too tight!” His hands flew up to his neck and loosened the knot of the tie, wondering if he needed to go back over the droid’s initial reprogramming. “I have to be able to breathe.”

“That was a complicated knot, you know,” it said. “All undone for your human inconveniences…”

Its fingers whirred as it took both ends in its hands, and Cassian glanced out the cockpit windshield at the planet below, lit up like Coruscant at the peak of the Old Republic. Thoughts of the mission came to his head, layouts of the sabacc room and upper-class customs, pushed down by the tedious care the droid took in folding the cloth around itself. As its hands inched closer to his neck, he thought of the stories. Hazy memories of metal fists cracking skulls.

“Please hold still, Captain Andor. If this isn’t done correctly, your cover could be blown--”

“Cassian.”

“That’s your name, yes.” It didn’t look up from the tie.

“You can call me Cassian.”

K-2SO looked up; and he’d been wrong earlier. There was a living spark in the bulbs it had for eyes. “Understood.” It paused. “If you like, you may call me ‘Kay.’ That way we can _both_ be disobeying the etiquette protocols in my system.” It finished with the tie and stepped back to admire its work-- _his_ work. His. Or--Cassian would ask to be sure later, but for now “it” wouldn’t do. “If you get exposed as a rube,” he said, heading toward the ship controls, “which is likely, call me on the comms. I can assist with matters like that.”

After they landed, as Cassian stepped off the ship, he waited for the pre-mission flutter in his gut, the quiet acceptance that this could be where he dies for the cause. It never came.

 

 ** _two._**  

“Remember when the nights here used to be cold?”

They had unrolled the lumpy cot from its nook in the temple three hours ago, told each other goodnight one hour ago, and still Chirrut refused to let either of them sleep. Down the hill Jedha City was quieting for the night, only lit by the glow of the star destroyer’s engine hovering just under the clouds.

“Remember when you were complaining about how tired you were this afternoon?”

On the other side of his back, Baze could feel him grinning up at the temple’s vaulted ceiling. “I miss that. You know, some of the merchants in the city think it’s because of all the Kyber mining.” His hand patted against the cot a couple times before finding his shoulder. Latching on there, waiting, until Baze covered it with his own.

“You can just ask, you know.”

“What?”

“I don’t care if it’s hot.” He turned over and found Chirrut already facing him. Not grinning like he thought, either. Baze grabbed his other hand, held both of them between his. “Come here.”

Chirrut shimmied closer and tucked his head under Baze’s chin. And he had been right--Jedha had gotten much warmer since they first took up post at the temple. However muggy it had been at high noon, the starscape of the galaxy always gave way to a bite, the occasional gust of wind from the desert. They’d slept like this every night, then: Baze’s arms holding Chirrut against his chest, Chirrut murmuring his prayers and following the line of Baze’s collarbone with his little finger.

(The Empire broke much of Jedha, but it couldn’t crack the base, the two of them under the arch of the temple.)

He placed a small kiss at the top of Chirrut’s head. “What else?”

“What else what?”

Baze sighed. “Something is troubling you. I see that now.”

“There is a lot troubling me. Don’t you know the state of the galaxy?”

Baze only cradled his head closer, ran his fingers through his short hair. “I don’t know how I couldn’t, living with you.”

A constant: Chirrut announcing to him and the rest of the temple guardians that the Empire had arrived on Jedha, before the rest of the moon had panicked; and as younger men, grabbing Baze by the shirtsleeve at the market and urging him to move, that they needed to get back to the temple, that something terrible was happening to the Jedi. That night, Chirrut held his shoulders against their cots like he did now. “The galaxy is about to change,” he had said, seeking out Baze’s face, tracing the line of his mouth. “The Force has been trying to tell me something, and I think it’s time to listen.”

Fitting, maybe, that it had been the first time they kissed.

“I’ve been having nightmares,” Chirrut said into his chest. “All of history is unrolled, even into the future, and none of this ever stops. And you’re there… but you’re not.”

Waiting for him to clarify was never the best option for an immediate answer, but Baze waited anyway. That was the rhythm--the statement and silence, the question and illumination. Maybe they both had to sit on whatever Chirrut had said for a few moments longer.

“And I’m there, but…”

“You’re also not.”

“Yes.” He whispered something about hope into Baze’s neck, too quiet for him to hear if he had been meant to. “I have faith that the Force will balance the galaxy out of these uncertain times. It’s just a dream, anyway. We may not get to see it--”

“What?”

“--but I have faith someone will.”

Baze pulled Chirrut back from his embrace and held his face in his hands. “You’re the one who is supposed to be giving me this speech.” The glow of the star destroyer’s engine arced over him and shone into Chirrut’s cloudy eyes--the light blue that would always be his favorite color, warming the center of his heart every time he caught it staring in his direction however sightless it was. “You never know. You could see it too.”

“Not in the literal sense.”

“I wasn’t talking in the literal sense,” he sighed. “Neither were you.” And Chirrut was grinning at him now, finally. His favorite sight in the galaxy, here in his arms and aiming straight for his heart: he tilted Chirrut’s chin up and kissed him, the core of him suddenly twenty-four again and revelling how the most devoted and charming of the temple guardians was pulling _him_ into the alcoves by the lips and holding his hand under the dinner table.

Before, he never questioned how Chirrut came to know the latest news of the galaxy before anyone else--now he began to wonder if he could sense what he had been harboring all these years together behind the facade of the tired protector, if he would ever be able to vocalize it. _Compass. You are my compass, you kept me here at the temple long after the others had departed for other worlds, the hope in your faith is contagious through the lightest touch of your fingers._

He had never learned to make his mouth move to those thoughts. Not with words, at least.

Chirrut pulled away slowly, letting the end of the kiss linger as he brought one of Baze’s palms to his cheek. “I don’t like thinking about a galaxy where you’re not with me.”

The nightmares _had_ upset him--when else would he talk like this? The onset of the Clone Wars, Order 66, Plau succumbing to Brain Rot…

“Then,” Chirrut said, “I’d have to worry about you getting yourself killed.”

“Me? Getting _myself_ killed?”

“You and I both know the reason why you didn’t get trampled by those camels ten years ago, and it wasn’t because you outmaneuvered them--”

“It was _so_.”

(Chirrut was right--they had established he was right eight years ago after conferring with one of the street droids in the city that had watched it happen from afar--but habit held a deep, familiar rut to fall into when the weeds outside the road grew too tall and wild to trudge through.)

Outside the temple, the wind shifted--he hadn’t even noticed it had started up for the night, the first night in a number of nights far greater than he had thought to try to count. The howl brushed dust and sand across the temple landing, the kind that stained his callouses the burnt brown of the Jedhan rock and that Chirrut was still holding fast to his face, the corner of his mouth.

“Your hands could hold galaxies,” he murmured. “And somehow I have them all to myself.”

He drifted off to sleep still tucked into Baze’s chest, turned away from the shadow of the Empire outside.

(Baze’s hands could hold galaxies, but they couldn’t shield them from what was coming. That they both knew, and there was no way to make the trade.)

 

 

 

 ** _three._**  

The hangar had been swarmed by a massive throng of pilots and support staff since the return trip from Eadu. Each extra person in the space clamped down around another part of Bodhi’s lungs until he was clammering for breath, drowning on dry land--in the far corner sat the rusting remains of an old Y-wing nearly walled in by stacks of boxes. There, the crowd thinned, and he could sit, think. _This was Yavin IV_. The Rebel Alliance, and his arm had the Imperial logo sewed to it with precise, careful stitching.

The senator in all white was calling a meeting in an hour, Jyn had said. He should come, she said. But she didn’t say why. He trusted Jyn, yes--or, he trusted her in the group they had formed escaping Jedha. _Come show the others you support the cause, see if you have any intelligence they could use_ \--he could hear her saying that. But the others who would see past his face and straight to that kriffing logo, no. Not sure about them.

“Chirrut said you were over here.”

Cassian. No longer sopping wet, but not quite yet dry if the dark patches on his clothes were any indication. He motioned for Bodhi to scoot over on the trunk he’d claimed, nearly letting himself fall into it. Their knees knocked together, stayed close enough that the heat radiated in the space between them.

“He, uh. He did?”

“I was going to ask how he knew, but Baze--you know, ‘don’t ask.’”

“Ah.” There was a beat, and Cassian kept staring off in the direction of a couple mechanics tinkering with a scorched astromech, but without actually looking at them. “Seems like that might--that might be a common thread there.”

Still Cassian said nothing. Sighed. And then his hand was on Bodhi’s thigh just above the knee. It stayed there, just as Cassian’s eyes stayed off by the astromech, and one by one his fingers pressed into the muscle. Just a bit. “I get too wound up after missions like this,” he said under his breath. “I would like to work it out of my system. If you’re interested.”

“You mean--”

“Only if you’re interested. There’s a supply closet behind this Y-wing.”

“I--you want to… _have sex_?” he added in a whisper. “I--”

“This isn’t a love thing and I don’t do this often.” Now he was looking at him, the tips of their noses almost touching. “I’m tense and you also seem like you’re a on edge. Plus…” He leaned back. “Not bad looking.”

It wasn’t as if Bodhi were averse to the idea--the heat of Cassian’s hand had crawled up his thigh, mirrored itself on his other leg--but. _But._ There was always the _but_.

“So do you want to?” Cassian asked.

“Yes, I just--”

“Follow after me. Wait a few seconds.”

Bodhi watched him disappear around the Y-wing, heard the door squeak open and close. “...I won’t know what I’m doing.” He said it to no one. The throng of orange flight suits rushed on before him like he wasn’t there. (Since he shouldn’t have been, really-- _no,_ no, he had defected, he had been there on Eadu and on the right side, he could do this.)

When he slipped into the closet, taking special care to latch the door, Cassian was still fully-clothed. Pacing the room, his fingers braided into his bangs. This, Bodhi could understand. He’d been there--more than enough closets and pantries at cargo stations had ovals worn into the floor by his boots.

(Sex? Stars, it was enough just to keep his head down on Jedha and on his cargo runs. True, there had been that almost-time with his regular inspector at the Coruscant port, but then the alarms had gone off before both of their shirts--)

“Come here.” Cassian stepped forward, grabbed his face, mashed their lips together. Hands gripping tighter until the stubs of fingernails started digging into the skin.

It came so suddenly Bodhi forgot what he should have been doing with his own hands. What did Cassian want? The Coruscant inspector had been gentle the brief moment they’d been together, but everyone on the cargo routes knew about the back rooms in that _one_ cantina each city had, how some pilots came back on board with bruises and flushed grins.

Cassian pulled back. “This is still okay?” His lips were redder than they had been in the hangar.

“Yeah, I--” He took a deep breath, refocused. “Is there something--I should, uh--”

Bodhi sensed that Cassian was likely not the kind of man that often smiled; but his eyebrows twitched up, and those red, red lips considered the idea at least. “You can be a little rough with me.”

“But do you _want_ \--”

And then Cassian let himself smile, bright and wide and all the way up to eyes--knocking the breath right out of Bodhi’s lungs in the small moment before it faded to something more measured. “Yes.” He wove his hands into the hair at the nape of Bodhi’s neck and pulled him back into an open-mouthed kiss.

The inspector had never kissed like this, like someone was using his whole body to strike a match and letting the sparks singe his skin. He could follow the cues--Cassian nipped at his bottom lip and Bodhi bit at his a little harder, teeth sinking slowly until Cassian’s breathing pitched up close to a whine. Light fingernails at his neck came back as scratches, red lines puffed up by the time Bodhi had pressed him up against the wall of the closet to kiss a line up his pulse point.

(He still didn’t know quite what he was doing, and maybe underneath the labored breathing Cassian was judging him for it, but that was a thought to worry about later. After the briefing and whatever was to follow.)

Bodhi’s fingers caught in knots at the back of Cassian’s head--a rough tug, an accident, and the closet lit up with a deep groan. He pushed their bodies together, felt Cassian’s hands on his chest as he pushed the jumpsuit to his shoulders. Nice hands, strong and calloused trailing down his sides to his hipbones, pulling him forward. Heat everywhere they touched, setting fire to the skittering train of his thoughts--

For the first time in as long as he could remember, his head was silent. The galaxy was a closet and the impending war sizzled away into smoke and it was just them, the desperate sounds traded on their tongues and then the hard duracrete floor as they finally stripped out of their clothes. He broke skin on his knees as he fell, he knew that, but Cassian laid out before him--red and panting, a dark splotch already blooming under his collarbone--that was better than a bacta patch.

He pinned Cassian’s hands on either side of his head, sucked at his bottom lip, worked the two of them together in tandem until they were gasping into each other’s necks and digging welts into where they were trying to hold on. For a second, or half that, Yavin IV’s gravity lifted and was ready to hurtle them into space. Cassian was murmuring his name like a mantra and they were safe. Would always be safe.

But only for a second. (Or half that.)

“Thank you,” Cassian sighed once they caught their breath. He stroked a strand of hair out of Bodhi’s eyes that had glued itself to his forehead with sweat. “You were good.”

Bodhi grinned. Wondered what he ought to say back.

But Cassian spoke again, already reaching to get dressed: “If anyone says anything to you about--you know… at the Council meeting…” He stared down at the shirt in his hands. “It’s not something you should pay attention to. They don’t know.”

“And you do?” he said before he could stop himself.

“I like to think so.”

The door squeaked when he stepped back into the hangar, leaving Bodhi alone with his thoughts as they revved up again. Louder than before, as if to make up for lost time.

 

 

 

 ** _four_.**  

Any other moment, he would have mistaken it for a sunrise.

Fest had sunrises this golden, beaches this soft. The sand at the edge of the water by Cassian’s childhood home had been as fine as dust--or so he remembered--but maybe it was just his memory that had fuzzed over trying to blunt all the parts that came next.

He thought of his brother. It had been a long time since he’d thought of his brother. Emel would come to the shore every night after dinner and sit just like this waiting for the sun to set. The sunsets on Fest, those were vibrant fuchsias and oranges, and Cassian would watch him, standing on his tiptoes until his nose could crest over the windowsill.

His leg throbbed in time with his chest at the thought, and Jyn was taking his hand. It was smaller than he thought it would be.

Her eyes gleamed in the light on the horizon, bright with it. They were going to die. They were all going to die if they hadn’t already, and there wasn’t nearly enough time to ponder on what a future could have looked like. For his whole life, he wasn’t sure what love was--not between two people, not in that way, but he could understand it between him and something he couldn’t touch. Himself and a memory, himself and a cause. (Maybe himself and Kaytoo, but that was more like loyalty. Laid in duracrete and impervious to the forces of nature and space.)

“Your father would be proud of you.” He wasn’t talking to her. Or--he was, in a way, but not entirely.

Just after midday on Fest, the heat could be thicker than the congealed bantha fat left on the outdoor fire pit and the stormtroopers marched through it anyway. Cassian hid, one eye tucked in the crack of the pantry door.

Six years old, Mon had told him so many times. There wasn’t anything he could have done to save them.

He wasn’t sure what love was but this would have to be it: Scarif's sand under his knees and the smoke sunk into Jyn’s vest, her arms shaking as they wrapped around his chest. Antagonism giving way into some shared recognition, the bodies six feet under their boots in the same earth, the two divergent winding paths that still led here to this beach, this body of water, this accepted sacrifice.

The strike from the Death Star hit in the distance, rocking the planet beneath them. Jyn was facing in that direction. He wondered if now they were taking the same path, if she was keeping her eyes closed. (Some part of him calmed at the thought of her staring down the fire as defiant and daring as she had the first time she had the audience of Mon on Yavin 4.)

He wondered if it would hurt, the blast seething through them.

He wondered if, in another iteration of the galaxy, he had been happy.

Jyn clutched him closer. It was coming. He tried to move past the smoke in her vest towards something he could latch onto, something more human. In her hair, if he focused, there was the writhing of fried squid in the Jedha market, the metallic tang of the Wobani tanks, and something else that edged too close to the palm trees after it rained when his mother would stand at the window and hold the thick air on her tongue.

His fingernails dug into her back. He was scared and he didn’t want to admit it. Death seemed so quiet after all the rebellion ringing in his ears.

He wondered about Chirrut and Baze. He wondered about Bodhi. How were they, did they see the light of the end coming, how did their fear taste? Was it the same? The memory of Bodhi’s tight grab on his neck twinged, then his broken leg, then his neck again. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about them together again--and Jyn, too, and maybe the three of them, all of them. He trusted them. He wanted their hands, the reassuring fence against the storm battering down on his ribs.

He wasn’t sure if his family was ready to see him after all they’d had to watch him do, so he pulled Jyn to him harder. Hard enough that were they to survive this, he might have heard her complain to Baze how his hold had bruised--but they wouldn’t live that long. It wouldn’t matter. 

The heat was coming closer. The plans were up in orbit above them and in these last moments, Cassian tried to love. He loved Chirrut and Baze’s devotion. Bodhi’s bravery, the tender touch of his tongue in his mouth. The resistance of Jyn’s words pressing back on old bruises, the hold of her arms now. K-2SO sitting by his side when no one else in the rebellion dared step forward.

Somewhere close, they were all sitting on this beach together. The sun was setting, and tomorrow existed.

The heat of the blast was fast approaching.

He hoped it would take him there.


End file.
